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The Month of the Underdog

by Christopher McIntosh
03/01/2006

Today is March 1st, and I'm officially christening this the month of the underdog. I've put in a request to Bill O'Reilly for an online petition, but I've been told unless I attach a rider involving comments regarding Keith Olbermann's ancestry, they won't support it.

We all know what's coming. Last second shots, improbable comebacks, Dick Vitale annoying most of the English-speaking world, office pools where the secretary correctly picks Bucknell to beat Kansas because a Bison could whip a Jayhawk, and those breathless first four days of play where the number of "out of office meetings" and cases of the "stomach flu" cost the US economy approximately the GNP of Burkina Faso.

It's the time of year where everyone wants to know what Rick Neuheisel and Jim Boeheim think. Both have famously (or infamously) picked the winner cold, although that brilliance nearly cost one man his job.

March. Madness. It's coming and I can't wait.

(No, I don't get paid by CBS)

I picked Vermont last year and was roundly ridiculed by everyone in my pool. When T. J. Sorrentine looked over at this coach, shrugged as if to say "you and I both know this isn't a good idea, but what the hell," and then promptly canned a three pointer from so far out that the other team hadn't even begun guarding him yet, I lost my mind.

Game over. Legend begins.

And to any one of the participants of that pool who made fun of me, I'm still waiting for my first place check. If y'all don't pay me soon, I'm hiring a nice young man I know with the middle name "the" - as in Jimmy the Snake or Bobby the Wolf - to "persuade" you to provide me with my rightful winnings.

Everyone loves March Madness. Even the pre-NCAA conference tournaments always produce high stakes rivalry games - it's the only time of year where the outcome of a Duke-Maryland ACC final could affect a Creighton or a Weber State's season-long goal of earning an invitation to the big dance.

The first two rounds of the tournament are epic. Win and you advance. Lose and you're out.

And for many of these players, that's it. A lifetime of competitive basketball at the highest level is gone in a single moment. Finished. There's no league for former D1 athletes who don't make it to the NBA. Lose your NCAA tournament game and unless you've already hired an agent, or plan on playing in Croatia, it's time to start shipping your resume around to look for a real job.

You can have Survivor or American Idol. When I want reality drama I want a person who's gotten their one shot on the national stage and makes the most of it. Like clockwork, it happens every year. A group of guys is given a once in a lifetime opportunity and they produce a once in a lifetime performance. The coaches son from Valpo hitting that three pointer after having gone the length of the floor with no time left. That Vermont shot. Illinois turning a blowout - both in terms of the game and in the effect it would have had on everyone's brackets - into one of the great comebacks in recent memory. I still remember Keith Van Horn not for his years in the NBA, but for his back-to-back game winning shots at Utah. I was in second grade when Georgetown lost to Villanova in one of the biggest upsets in championship game history. Even though we were too young to stay up late enough to watch it, that's all we could talk about at school the next day, even though none of us had actually seen it.

My girlfriend does not like basketball. She loves March Madness. She organizes the pools, fills out the brackets and follows the coverage religiously. I think it's mostly because she likes highlighting winners and putting a line through the losers. The efficiency of the process appeals to her.

It could also be that the ruthlessness of an "elimination" tournament appeals to her German sensibilities.

Most of us have allegiances to only a few colleges, but the tournament makes us into rabid lunatics in rooting for the teams to which we've got no reasonable allegiance. And when presented with a neutral game, we pick the underdog. I'm not going to try and justify why we love the underdog (insert George Will waxing philosophic about our conservative roots, Bill Walton rambling incoherently, or Charles Barkley making some reference to his weight) but we do.

And if you're rooting for the underdog, there have been some pretty good omens recently.

I'm not going to argue the validity of the ultimate decision, but a 5' 9" gentleman won the Slam Dunk competition during the NBA All Star weekend. And he did it in spectacular fashion. He clinched it with the single most brilliant, get your ass out of your seat move I've seen since VC's legendary performance years ago.

He took a page out of the Josh Smith playbook by employing a throwback Atlanta Hawks jersey. But this went a step further.

Once he reached the finals, Nate runs off to the sideline and grabs a vintage Spud jersey, which produced a collective yawn. Been there, done that.

But he doesn't put it on. He goes further into the stands and pulls out... Spud Webb.

In the flesh. The man himself. Puts the Spud throwback on Spud, walks the man out to a space underneath the basket and hands him the ball.

Nate runs back to about 3/4 court and begins to sprint toward Spud. Almost the entire crowd rises to their feet.

Spud bounces the ball off the floor.

Nate, all 5 foot 9 inches of him, leaps, catches the ball one handed, and soars OVER an absolutely motionless Spud Webb, and throws it down.

Anyone who wasn't already standing, immediately jumped out of their seat. I jumped out of my seat and my seat was on a plaid, beat up couch with cardboard boxes as end tables.

The replay was even more impressive. Spud didn't even flinch. He just stood there as Nate flew over him.

To be fair, that wasn't even the most impressive dunk of the evening.

Description only taints it, so I won't bother any great details. I'll just leave it at this.

Andre Iguodola took a pass off the backboard and dunked it, but this pass ricocheted off the BACK of the backboard.

I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it. He picked a ball out of the air from behind the backboard, glided, ducked his head to avoid the rim, twisted around 180 degrees, and threw it down from in front of the basket.

He hit the ground and then promptly ran out of the gym declaring that it was over. And it might should have been.

But we love the underdog. So the underdog wins.

The other omen has been the high school manager for the Greece-Athena high school basketball team.

I caught the video on the web and heard the story, but only saw the interviews with him and his coach yesterday. I'm not embarrassed to admit that by the end, as the Sports Guy says, "it was getting a little dusty in there." Luckily I was alone and didn't have to explain the blubbering mess or, more importantly, why it was caused by a three minute Sportscenter segment.

I'm not making any of this up. And as much as the Iguodola dunk is something you should search high and low for, if you are one of the few left who have not seen the video, find it. Immediately.

Last home game of the season. Senior night. The coach, in a move that can only be described as charitable, decides to dress the team manager for the game. He's a baller, but has never suited up for a game in his 4 years of involvement with the basketball team, so the coach decides to reward him by letting him wear the uniform.

No promises he'd get in the game. This game mattered - it wasn't against a cupcake and it had implications for their playoff seeding.

The student body got wind of this and went out and made hundreds of signs with Jason McElwain's face on it anyways.

Everyone loves an underdog. Everyone roots for the team manager who suits up for Senior night even though he's never played a JV or Varsity minute. He was just too small.

Well, that and the other thing. He's autistic.

As luck would have it, his team got up by 20 with about four minutes to go. And Jason got the call he'd been waiting for four years. He was so unfamiliar with the substitution rules that he nearly ran straight onto the court without even checking in at the scorer's table.

He's short, so he's not getting the ball in the post. But he does get a pass in the corner. And launches a three.

The crowd jumped to their feet. But he got nothing but air.

And then he got another chance. Ball's swung over to him on the right wing. Sets up outside the three point line and throws it up.

Nothing but the bottom of the net. The crowd goes absolutely bananas.

Great story. Except for one thing. He's not done.

He goes on to hit SIX three pointers in three minutes, ending the game as the high scorer with 20.

The crowd, the team, the bench... hell, even the other team, are all going out of their minds each time he winds up, lets it go, and backpedals up court like he's JJ Redick while the place erupts around him.

The game ends with the crowd having rushed down to the side of the court waiting for the final whistle so they can storm the court.

Jason finds himself with the ball with three seconds left. He's about thirty feet away from the basket. Time's about to run out, so it's time for a heat check. He said later that the hoop, "looked just like a big ol' bucket."

We all know what comes next. He puts it up from Dan Majerle territory and the net barely moves. The crowd rushes the floor and he gets carried off on their shoulders.

I doubt anything will happen this March (or maybe any March) that will top that. But you never know.

It is the month of the underdog.